Enable IntelliJ dialogs on Mac OS X

Note: This is no longer necessary in PhpStorm 8. IntelliJ uses it’s own dialogs by default.

I recently ran into an issue using the merge tool in PhpStorm 7.1 on OS X 10.8. The native OS dialogs were grabbing focus away from the foreground, making it impossible to close the merge window or see the dialog to acknowledge it. This forced me to terminate the process.

PhpStorm uses native OS dialogs by default:

To use the IntelliJ dialogs, PhpStorm has a configuration file here:

/Applications/PhpStorm.app/bin/idea.properties

Add the following line:

ide.mac.message.dialogs.as.sheets=false

Now your dialogs will look like so:

I prefer the IntelliJ dialogs for several reasons. First, they address the focus issue I mentioned above. Secondly, they respond faster than the native dialogs. Finally, keyboard shortcuts work as expected. Apple OS X keyboard shortcuts (especially in dialogs) leave much to be desired.

I enable the IntelliJ file chooser for the same reasons:

native.mac.file.chooser.enabled=false

Overall, JetBrains has done a stellar job at providing intuitive shortcuts by default (and a highly configurable keymap). The idea.properties file is another example of what makes IntelliJ exceptionally flexible.